2. If you are making various moral proclamations on social media and elsewhere, what is the basis of your moral complaints? I want to know a person's epistemology (source of knowledge and authority) with respect to morals writ large. Why is it that social media, and the media in general, reads like a mass mindless reposting of the oracles of culturally approved opinion?
Do you, or the voices you repeat, possess some moral authority that another person of equal intelligence but an opposite opinion might possess? Are human opinions, when compared with others, perhaps self-cancelling?
How is it that everyone on social media is now an authority on everything, including complex issues like how to police a society, the reasons and solutions for poverty, defining racism and solving it, on and on it goes? The bigger the question, the more self-congratulatory and self-assured these people are in their pontifications (watch how quickly they can google seventeen articles that agree with them), their professors, their own answers culled from years of life experience and held together by impressive brains. Just throw out any question and you'll tap into all the answers you could ever need. It's a wonder we don't solve all social problems by simply asking the brain trust of the various social media! I highly recommend Thomas Sowell's work on Intellectuals to anyone interested in more on this subject.
I wonder how many of these people, for example, have ever entered a situation where people want to kill them, or at least do great harm to them. And yet they all seem to know exactly how the police should operate, all because they read a few articles about the police force in Denmark or something.
How is it that everyone on social media is now an authority on everything, including complex issues like how to police a society, the reasons and solutions for poverty, defining racism and solving it, on and on it goes? The bigger the question, the more self-congratulatory and self-assured these people are in their pontifications (watch how quickly they can google seventeen articles that agree with them), their professors, their own answers culled from years of life experience and held together by impressive brains. Just throw out any question and you'll tap into all the answers you could ever need. It's a wonder we don't solve all social problems by simply asking the brain trust of the various social media! I highly recommend Thomas Sowell's work on Intellectuals to anyone interested in more on this subject.
I wonder how many of these people, for example, have ever entered a situation where people want to kill them, or at least do great harm to them. And yet they all seem to know exactly how the police should operate, all because they read a few articles about the police force in Denmark or something.
3. Why is it that the biological strictures of sex don’t define a person, but race does? How is that genetic sex is unrelated to gender identity, but genetic skin color is related to race identity? Perhaps I can merely stop identifying as white in order to escape the charge of white privilege?
Is the issue of white privilege wholly without nuance or explanatory subtlety? Is it de facto the case that every white person has some undefined and often merely subjective "privilege?" Is there any need to talk about whether or not they are descended from poor Irish immigrants or whatever?
4. Why the gaggle of moral federalists all of a sudden? Why is every living white person now guilty for the representative sins of those who lived generations before them? Why is every living white person, or at least every cop, now guilty of a bad cop's sin? (All of this is a miserable representation of Christian federalism, but that for another day...)
5. Why the focus on our federal guilt for sins against blacks? Surely our ancestors sinned against bunches of other people? Perhaps other people's ancestors sinned against still other people, but we need to stay focused! What is the specific share of moral responsibility white people owe for their ancestor's sins against native Americans, Mexicans, Asian Americans, on and on it goes?
6. How specifically am I supposed to pay for the race sins of my ancestors? Reparations? How much? For how long before I can be forgiven for their sins? Perhaps all of it should be burned to the ground, rich white people guillotined, their wealth redistributed to those in need. What will happen 50 years hence if we do that? Sounds radical, but I'm actually seeing well educated adults on social media affirming such things (perhaps not the guillotine, but gulags for sure).
7. If you are tempted to suggest that it is for my race sins and for my privilege that I should be punished, then what specific acts would you allege that I have done? Or is it that I am to be punished for not doing something, or not saying something? What specific things given my life circumstances should I have done? What is the calculus for my share of guilt based on omission? What should I have done for Native Americans? Or for women? There are German's in my family line, so perhaps I should have done something or said something more about anti-semitism?
How are you to interpret my various sins of omission? How can failures to do the good be put down to racism rather than generic selfishness, in which case presumably you must preside over a near omniscient awareness of my psychology and my timeline in order to denounce all that I failed to do for my fellow man at every juncture? And who are you to be my judge with respect to such things? Can I return the favor?
8. Why the pathetic pablum of self-flagellation? I hope that these people are doing more than all this sickening, self-aggrandizing, pseudo-humble grandstanding on social media platforms. If they were, it surely seems probable they would post about it. But I don't see a lot of that. I do see things like this one white woman, who posted a picture of how "sad" she was. Literally a pouty white face next to a message of #blacklivesmatter and apologizing profusely for her privilege.
9. Abortion is okay, but exposing grandparents to a virus is not?
10. Why should we lock down a country to save 200k lives, but not for 30-60k, or perhaps more if you adjust for automobile deaths? What is the secular utilitarian calculus here?
11. The Big One: What is the foundation of social unity? Is there anything at this point in our history that can re-unify us as a nation? Perhaps it is time to look for something other than cultural animosity and diversity and endless lines drawn in the identity politics game. But I fear any positive source of national unity is totally lost. Secularism leads logically to relativistic particularization of a culture, and that is precisely what we are seeing. God is dead after all, and plenty of people fail to see the wisdom of following after the likes of Howard Zinn or Peter Singer or the New York Times. The liberalization of Christian theology has also rendered God’s word only the dim and variegated voices of men. In short, it has secularized God and crushed His voice beneath the din of a thousand interpreters.
Is the issue of white privilege wholly without nuance or explanatory subtlety? Is it de facto the case that every white person has some undefined and often merely subjective "privilege?" Is there any need to talk about whether or not they are descended from poor Irish immigrants or whatever?
4. Why the gaggle of moral federalists all of a sudden? Why is every living white person now guilty for the representative sins of those who lived generations before them? Why is every living white person, or at least every cop, now guilty of a bad cop's sin? (All of this is a miserable representation of Christian federalism, but that for another day...)
5. Why the focus on our federal guilt for sins against blacks? Surely our ancestors sinned against bunches of other people? Perhaps other people's ancestors sinned against still other people, but we need to stay focused! What is the specific share of moral responsibility white people owe for their ancestor's sins against native Americans, Mexicans, Asian Americans, on and on it goes?
6. How specifically am I supposed to pay for the race sins of my ancestors? Reparations? How much? For how long before I can be forgiven for their sins? Perhaps all of it should be burned to the ground, rich white people guillotined, their wealth redistributed to those in need. What will happen 50 years hence if we do that? Sounds radical, but I'm actually seeing well educated adults on social media affirming such things (perhaps not the guillotine, but gulags for sure).
7. If you are tempted to suggest that it is for my race sins and for my privilege that I should be punished, then what specific acts would you allege that I have done? Or is it that I am to be punished for not doing something, or not saying something? What specific things given my life circumstances should I have done? What is the calculus for my share of guilt based on omission? What should I have done for Native Americans? Or for women? There are German's in my family line, so perhaps I should have done something or said something more about anti-semitism?
How are you to interpret my various sins of omission? How can failures to do the good be put down to racism rather than generic selfishness, in which case presumably you must preside over a near omniscient awareness of my psychology and my timeline in order to denounce all that I failed to do for my fellow man at every juncture? And who are you to be my judge with respect to such things? Can I return the favor?
8. Why the pathetic pablum of self-flagellation? I hope that these people are doing more than all this sickening, self-aggrandizing, pseudo-humble grandstanding on social media platforms. If they were, it surely seems probable they would post about it. But I don't see a lot of that. I do see things like this one white woman, who posted a picture of how "sad" she was. Literally a pouty white face next to a message of #blacklivesmatter and apologizing profusely for her privilege.
9. Abortion is okay, but exposing grandparents to a virus is not?
10. Why should we lock down a country to save 200k lives, but not for 30-60k, or perhaps more if you adjust for automobile deaths? What is the secular utilitarian calculus here?
11. The Big One: What is the foundation of social unity? Is there anything at this point in our history that can re-unify us as a nation? Perhaps it is time to look for something other than cultural animosity and diversity and endless lines drawn in the identity politics game. But I fear any positive source of national unity is totally lost. Secularism leads logically to relativistic particularization of a culture, and that is precisely what we are seeing. God is dead after all, and plenty of people fail to see the wisdom of following after the likes of Howard Zinn or Peter Singer or the New York Times. The liberalization of Christian theology has also rendered God’s word only the dim and variegated voices of men. In short, it has secularized God and crushed His voice beneath the din of a thousand interpreters.
Winsomeness, persuasion, dialectical pursuit of truth; these are dead. You have to believe there is truth to try to win someone to it. We now have shouting and posting and protesting and posturing that only deepens the divides that exist. Where is there even a belief that a sufficiently inspiring and abundantly meaningful source of moral unity exists?
